In movie criticism, there’s praise, and then there’s praise. In his New York Times review of Criterion’s double-barreled Roberto Rossellini history film release slate this week—the special edition The Taking of Power by Louis XIV and Eclipse Series 14, including The Age of the Medici, Cartesius, and Blaise Pascal—Dave Kehr makes a grand claim indeed. Reminding readers of the legendary Italian director’s statement that “one makes films in order to become a better human being,” Kehr concludes his piece with this call to self-improvement: “Just watching Rossellini’s magnificent work may help a bit in that department as well.”
The Rossellini love continues, albeit slightly tempered, over at Film Comment, where Patrick Friel, reviewing Louis XIV, makes his own declaration: “Rossellini was always a visionary, but with a series of unlikely made-for-television historical films in the last decade of his life, he became a radical.” In the Boston Globe, Mark Feeney agrees, writing, “No filmmaker has addressed as extensively—or successfully—the cinematic challenge of plausibly recovering the past as Roberto Rossellini did.” He calls Louis XIV “arresting, utterly distinctive filmmaking.”
And in a Los Angeles Times review, Dennis Lim hopes the Criterion releases will help spread the word about these unique films: “Rossellini’s late work is long overdue for a wider audience. His history project was a retreat from the big screen but a massive undertaking nonetheless, perverse in its grandiosity and yet perfectly logical for an artist who, despite his claims, evidently still believed in cinema as a means of understanding the world.”
Update (21JAN09): John Powers discusses The Taking of Power by Louis XIV on NPR’s Fresh Air, calling it “one of the greatest of all historical movies” and even drawing parallels to more recent political history: “Like Louis, President Obama must find a way of bringing rivals under his sway. Think how he handled Joe Leiberman and Hilary Clinton.”
Update (2FEB09): In the New Yorker, Richard Brody also brings Rossellini into the present: “He made the internecine struggles and intellectual debates of centuries past seem as vibrant and vital as contemporary politics and intimate affairs.”
Update (18FEB09): “Slip in one of the DVDs from the Criterion set Rossellini's History Films, and watch the tube radiate intelligence,” promises J. Hoberman in the Village Voice. “Rossellini's amazingly lucid movies have an intimacy well-suited to the small screen and an immediacy rare in historical reconstruction.”
1973
255 min
Color
1.33:1
1972
129 min
Color
1.33:1
1974
162 min
Color
1.33:1
1966
100 min
Color
1.33:1
Categories: Press Notes
1 Comments
Mon 02 Feb at 07:39 AM
Mosabber Rahman
There are some films that just need to be made, period. You don’t care if it’s good or bad. An attempt to capture it on film is enough. And again there are some directors are important enough to look beyond any …’tainment.
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